Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr. Tunde Fowler, yesterday urged members of the Institute of Directors (IoD) to take advantage of the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS). He gave the advice in Lagos while making a presentation on tax amnesty scheme to IoD members. In the presentation entitled; “Achieving Voluntary Tax Compliance: The VAIDS Option,” the FIRS chairman said the key motivation for introducing the scheme was that the country’s tax remittance rate remained low despite having some of Africa’s most profitable and well-capitalised companies.
“Nigeria’s low tax revenues are inconsistent with the lifestyles and spending habits of a large number of citizens.
Many are engaged in transfer of assets overseas, use of offshore companies in tax havens and registration of assets in nominee names,” Fowler said.
He noted that tax evasion constitutes a significant challenge to the government while also listing a number of ways through which taxes were evaded.
Among these, he said, were manipulation of accounting records, use of complex structures for transactions, non-registration for Value Added Tax (VAT), non-payment of Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on asset disposal and escaping detection of income due to lack of machinery for tracing such.
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